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Live on Ruby 4 Day - 12/14

NewPennCruiser

By NewPennCruiser,
in Princess Cruises

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slcjessica

slcjessica

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I just finished reading the thread and I haven't seen any mention of the food. I ask because my husband is on this cruise right now and he just sent me a message saying the food has been pretty bad. He didn't go into much detail, just said it's like he is on a different cruise. (Comparing the food to our first cruise on The Crown Princess this past Spring, which we both thought was pretty phenomenal.)

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alexspepa

alexspepa

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Hey - thanks for posting this - we are on the ship next week. i cannot wait to tell my wife about the 700 kids! I am sure it will be fun though - I love kids.:)

 

Can you tell me if they have duplicate bridge sessions?

 

and i echo the other poster - how is the food?

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NewPennCruiser

NewPennCruiser

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So here is my comment about the food on this cruise. It all seemed pretty normal except without formal night there was no lobster. Café Caribe was only open for dinner once when they did the Bavarian Bierfest on the second night. The buffet of course was open every night.

 

As for the dining room, the menus were standard fare. The usual Welcome Aboard menu and then nothing really special for the rest of the cruise. The Da Vinci dining room was open for breakfast and lunch everyday. It seemed like Sabatinis and Crown Grill were more crowded than usual since you could only dine there over 4 nights vs 7. One of our favorite places to eat is Sabatinis and we did eat there once. It did not disappoint. We actually ate most meals in the buffet and didn’t go hungry. I’m sure there is someone on the ship who probably hated the food; there always seems to be one, but really it seems ok to me. In my opinion, the food has not been anything special but not really bad either. And of course it's all very subjective. To be honest I’m happy if I can just get their pizza, peanut butter cookies, fresh pasta and chicken salad at the Int’l Café.

 

Of note tonight the dining room does have Surf and Turf on the menu. Also on past cruises it always seemed like one of the Anytime Dining rooms would be traditional seating early and then Anytime the rest of the night. That has not been the case on this cruise. Both Anytime Dining rooms are just that from 5:30 on.

 

Dave

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NewPennCruiser

NewPennCruiser

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Hey - thanks for posting this - we are on the ship next week. i cannot wait to tell my wife about the 700 kids! I am sure it will be fun though - I love kids.:)

 

Can you tell me if they have duplicate bridge sessions?

 

and i echo the other poster - how is the food?

 

There are actually quite a few kids on this cruise but not anything near 700. All have been well behaved.

 

Regarding bridge. They offered Party Bridge Play (unhosted) in Crown Grill I think on the 2nd and 3rd days of the cruise.

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NewPennCruiser

NewPennCruiser

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So here is the scoop on Disembarkation and this is certainly different than anything we have experienced on Princess before. I alluded to this on a previous post and was surprised to see that most people were just assigned as “walkoff”. There are actually 28 Walkoff groups, starting at 7:00 and ending at 10:25.

 

We went to find out what was going on and were told that on these shorter cruises, unless you have a Princess sponsored tour or transfer, you will be designated as Walkoff. If you do need assistance with your baggage and want to go through the usual process of putting your bags out the night before, just go see them and you can be assigned a color and be given tags for one of the three designated times for passengers with independent arrangements. Those times on this cruise were 7:40, 8:40 and 9:45. If you choose one of those, you will pack, leave your bag out, get colored tags, etc…. just as you are used to. Then just meet where and when told to and disembark the ship as you always have.

 

If you remain Walkoff, you are also assigned a group and told to meet at a place at a certain time to spreadout the walkoffs, BUT you are not given a tag or anything saying what group you are in, so in essence, once the walkoffs have started, you can just leave whenever you want between 7:00 and 10:25. I’m sure they don’t want you to necessarily do that but you don’t have any colored tag to identify yourself since you’re dragging all your bags with you.

 

For example we were assigned Walkoff 14 which was for 8:55 but we need to leave earlier. We decided to just stay grouped as walkoff because we can handle our bags but the rep told us we didn’t need to change groups; we could leave whenever we wanted. So in essence, if you were assigned to leave at 7, you really could stick around and leave later. We’ll see how this goes. If there are 2,000 people designated as walkoff and they start disembarking at 7 on time, all 2,000 could try to leave the ship at the same time. Princess isn’t banking on that happening and telling you to leave at a certain time to spread things out, but we will just have to wait and see how this goes. I’ll report back later with my observations on this process….it should be interesting.

 

You do still need to vacate your room by 8:00. And Club Fusion is still open for Elite, Platinum and Suite passengers.

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Wehwalt

Wehwalt

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So here is the scoop on Disembarkation and this is certainly different than anything we have experienced on Princess before. I alluded to this on a previous post and was surprised to see that most people were just assigned as “walkoff”. There are actually 28 Walkoff groups, starting at 7:00 and ending at 10:25.

 

We went to find out what was going on and were told that on these shorter cruises, unless you have a Princess sponsored tour or transfer, you will be designated as Walkoff. If you do need assistance with your baggage and want to go through the usual process of putting your bags out the night before, just go see them and you can be assigned a color and be given tags for one of the three designated times for passengers with independent arrangements. Those times on this cruise were 7:40, 8:40 and 9:45. If you choose one of those, you will pack, leave your bag out, get colored tags, etc…. just as you are used to. Then just meet where and when told to and disembark the ship as you always have.

 

If you remain Walkoff, you are also assigned a group and told to meet at a place at a certain time to spreadout the walkoffs, BUT you are not given a tag or anything saying what group you are in, so in essence, once the walkoffs have started, you can just leave whenever you want between 7:00 and 10:25. I’m sure they don’t want you to necessarily do that but you don’t have any colored tag to identify yourself since you’re dragging all your bags with you.

 

For example we were assigned Walkoff 14 which was for 8:55 but we need to leave earlier. We decided to just stay grouped as walkoff because we can handle our bags but the rep told us we didn’t need to change groups; we could leave whenever we wanted. So in essence, if you were assigned to leave at 7, you really could stick around and leave later. We’ll see how this goes. If there are 2,000 people designated as walkoff and they start disembarking at 7 on time, all 2,000 could try to leave the ship at the same time. Princess isn’t banking on that happening and telling you to leave at a certain time to spread things out, but we will just have to wait and see how this goes. I’ll report back later with my observations on this process….it should be interesting.

 

You do still need to vacate your room by 8:00. And Club Fusion is still open for Elite, Platinum and Suite passengers.

 

Interesting, thanks. As I will have one large suitcase with me, I will probably note on my disembark form that I'd like it taken off the ship per the usual procedure.

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coo359a2

coo359a2

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We are on this cruise too and have enjoyed the food in the Horizon Court each night. The ship hasn't felt crowded at all and very few kids are using ""kid's camp" each day. My grandson has been the only one in the Teen Club for the most part. I'm not sure how NewPennCruiser has gotten on the internet to post each day as the internet service has been almost non existent since day one. My first log in took 10 minutes to get 7 emails. Asked the internet manager about it and he said that it was bad for the whole ship and I was lucky I got some of my emails. Spent 7 minutes yesterday and couldn't get a page to load. So now using my 150 minutes before we get off tomorrow. I will be checking my Princess account when we get back home to see how long it takes to get the "free" OBC cruise.

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NewPennCruiser

NewPennCruiser

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We are on this cruise too and have enjoyed the food in the Horizon Court each night. The ship hasn't felt crowded at all and very few kids are using ""kid's camp" each day. My grandson has been the only one in the Teen Club for the most part. I'm not sure how NewPennCruiser has gotten on the internet to post each day as the internet service has been almost non existent since day one. My first log in took 10 minutes to get 7 emails. Asked the internet manager about it and he said that it was bad for the whole ship and I was lucky I got some of my emails. Spent 7 minutes yesterday and couldn't get a page to load. So now using my 150 minutes before we get off tomorrow. I will be checking my Princess account when we get back home to see how long it takes to get the "free" OBC cruise.

 

The free credit showed up on my account today. That makes the cruise even nicer. :)

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NewPennCruiser

NewPennCruiser

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This has turned out to be a fantastic break from reality this week. We never had an urge to do a short cruise before but really we have enjoyed ourselves a lot and would do this again in a heartbeat. It was a great deal when we booked it and didn’t realize we would get the money back toward a future cruise which we were planning anyway, so it turned out pretty perfect. The only bad part of this whole trip is that it was too short; but it really served its purpose. I needed a break away from work and the early cold weather and I have enjoyed every second of this trip.

 

This really was a very “casual” cruise. We just kind of relaxed and got into the spirit of “island time” and just went with the flow. If you prefer the more formal offerings of Princess, you might not like these short cruises, but it certainly is a nice option without needing to go to Carnival, NCL or other lines that also offer these short Caribbean getaways.

 

I was trying to think of things that were missing on this cruise compared to the other usual Princess offerings and I can’t think of much that I already have mentioned. There was no need for the Princess Orchestra in the production shows, so there was no orchestra which meant there was no jazz night in Adagio or other concerts that the musicians might put on in the Piazza or Explorers Lounge. There was no string quartet, but then again there isn’t one on all sailings anyway. Tyrone in the Piazza playing steel drum was a nice addition and the musical offerings around the ship were excellent.

 

The much talked about formal night did not happen so no formal portraits or no lobster if that matters to you. We saw many individuals and families still dressed up for pictures; so even though there is no Princess dictated formal night, wear what you want and indulge if that makes you happy.

 

Speaking of passenger mix again, it was diverse and much younger than a normal Princess Cruise either brought about because of the shorter itinerary and/or the cheap rates. It was by no means a “booze cruise”... but much livelier. For example the Ultimate Deck Party was more crowded than I have ever seen it with a lot of people dancing. I’m not sure if Skywalkers was anymore active because we never made it up there late at night but I suspect the ship had a few more people than usual staying up past 11. I also did not hear people complaining so we were either lucky to avoid them or it really was a pretty happy ship. There were roughly 2,500 on board and we heard tonight that 103 are doing a b2b.

 

Again I didn’t say a whole lot about food because mainly that topic is so subjective, but in my opinion it was average for a Princess cruise in my opinion and it was fine. I’m not particularly picky and was always able to find something to my liking. If there were 2,500 passengers onboard you will get 2,500 opinions. I will say there was nothing particularly inticing on the menu to draw us into the dining rooms on any given night, so we stuck to the Int’l Cafe, Cafe Caribe or Horizon Court where there was always something that we liked. Without the formal night and not doing the Italian Themed night, the options were just pretty boring and in my opinion no better than what was being served in Horizon Court. The food was still very good and the Horizon Court was never too crowded.

 

I hope this helped some of you who had a lot of questions like we did before this cruise. I’ve always been appreciative of others taking time to provide their experiences so I just wanted to pay it back a little. Plus the usual platinum internet minutes for a week REALLY go far when you get the same amount for 4 days. ☺ If you have anymore questions, let me know. I’ll post some updates tomorrow after disembarkation to let you know how this different “walkoff” method works out.

 

Dave

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caribill

caribill

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This There was no need for the Princess Orchestra in the production shows, so there was no orchestra which meant there was no jazz night in Adagio or other concerts that the musicians might put on in the Piazza or Explorers Lounge. There was no string quartet, but then again there isn’t one on all sailings anyway.

 

To me, those are two things I would miss on a cruise of any number of days.

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SaraLee

SaraLee

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i really hope the lotus pool is open .. I read about it and decided to try princess have traveled once on princess on the star when it was new since then I have always been on royal last cruise being a month ago on the allure .. they had a really nice adult area with a lot of hot tubs and a wonderful cold pool with jets . I need to exersize and I do it in the pool and I wanted to use the lotus pool to do this .. It will be heart breaking if this adult area is not open . it doesn't sound like it from the peep who wrote this live report . thank you for it but I sure hope they have fixed it .. we are waiting now till morning to board .

 

I hope princess does not disappoint . we were given a great cabin for inside but then they upgraded us to aft on the lifeboat window .. I was happy to be in the middle of this ship on the Caribe deck but I quess you cant fight what they call an upgrade I called and they said they couldn't give us back our old room so it was kind of a disspointment . I hope things change .. thank you for your report and info

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Fla Mike

Fla Mike

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Thanks so much. I really appreciated the time you took and your honest and upbeat comments.

 

Like many, we are veteran cruisers of many years, but for some reason always seemed to pass Princess by and this looked like, and seems very much to be the perfect introduction.

 

A little bummed about the formal night being scrubbed, but we will do it up anyway, we always do, even on a Carnival booze cruise!

 

Thanks Again.

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